Some people might not nominate Hannah for induction into the “Great Mothers Hall of Fame”. After all, she didn’t fully raise her son herself. She gave him up to Eli the priest after he was weaned (at about two or three years old). She only saw him once a year after that when she and her husband went up to the temple to offer sacrifice.

Still, if I had to pick the greatest mother in the Old Testament, I would pick Hannah hands down. Her son Samuel would not have been born at all if she had not pressed through in prayer for him. She simply would not take no for an answer. She wanted a son and she was willing to give him up to God if that’s what it took to get one. Well, that’s what it took!

God gave her Samuel and then Hannah gave him back to minister to the Lord for the remainder of his life. Rather than suffer from this arrangement, Samuel thrived and he heard God’s voice at a very tender age even when “the word of the Lord was rare in those days” (1 Samuel 3:1). He became probably the greatest Judge and Prophet of Israel.

Hannah didn’t just bear a son for herself but for God’s people. His great destiny is largely due to her great sacrifice. Here is her legacy: “But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the fruit of her hand, and let her own works praise her in the gates” (Proverbs 31:31).